Maine has rarely exonerated anyone convicted of a felony. Still, a state lawmaker said Monday that she believes there are innocent people in state prison.

Rep. Nina Milliken, D-Blue Hill, chats with a colleague during a House session at the Maine State House in Augusta in April 2024 Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Rep. Nina Milliken, D-Blue Hill, is sponsoring a bill to create a new office that will reexamine criminal convictions and “make sure they were arrived at by just means.”

“When we convict an innocent person, we not only destroy their life, but we fail to hold the actual perpetrator responsible,” Milliken said.

LD 425 calls on Maine’s attorney general to create a Conviction Integrity Unit to review convictions and “determine whether there is clear and convincing evidence of actual evidence.”

The unit would have the authority to reinvestigate cases, with access to all files, work products, notes, laboratory and personnel records that led to a conviction. They would be able to consider any new evidence offered by defendants and conduct interviews of them and witnesses to the alleged crime.

If the unit determines a conviction was wrong, they can request the attorney general file a petition for post-conviction review that could lead to a new trial or allow prosecutors to vacate a charge.

The legislation had few opponents during a public hearing Monday. An advisory group on criminal law argued in written testimony to the Judiciary Committee that they found the proposal unnecessary.

But the effort seeks to create new positions during what’s already proving to be a difficult budgeting year. While no fiscal note is available for the bill, a similar version in 2021 came with an estimate of roughly $375,000 annually for three positions and overhead.

People exit the Maine State House Monday in Augusta.

SUCCESS IN OTHER STATES

Conviction Integrity Units exist all over the country on state and local levels. The first was opened in 2007 in Dallas County, Texas, where in August 2024 it led to the exoneration of Ben Spencer. Spencer had served 34 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.

In New England, a Connecticut unit led a judge to vacate charges against George Gould, who had been convicted of felony murder in 1995. In Boston, at least eight people previously convicted of murder have been exonerated after a unit was created in Suffolk County in 2012, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

In Maine, Milliken said, there are two men behind bars who she said could be innocent: Foster Bates and Dennis Dechaine. Both have exhausted numerous appeals while serving life sentences. But those appeals have been constrained by legal deadlines and tight restrictions on the kind of new evidence they can introduce following trial.

“We have statutes in place that make it very difficult for wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted men,” Milliken said. “There are laws on the book in this state that make it very difficult for those men to argue their innocence.”

Dechaine was found guilty in 1989 of the murder and rape of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry. He has maintained his innocence and recently lost an effort to get a new trial, following new DNA testing results that he argued pointed to another suspect.

A jury found Bates guilty in 2002 of murder in the death of his neighbor, Tammy Dickson. He lost his attempt to get a new trial in December 2023, after a rare two-day hearing focused on new evidence that he wasn’t aware of at trial.

Milliken read testimony from Bates on Monday, pointing to a six-hour video of investigators interviewing another suspect — exactly the type of incident that Bates said he hopes would be explored by a conviction integrity unit.

“Had the jury heard this exculpatory evidence, of the alternative suspect’s admission of guilt, ‘not guilty’ would have been the outcome,” Bates wrote. “The trial court judge did nothing and my court-appointed attorneys did nothing.”

IS IT NECESSARY?

Under the proposal, the attorney general’s office would have to create a report for lawmakers every year on the unit’s work — including however many applications they receive, the facts of each conviction, and what the unit thinks of them. They would also have to notify state regulators if they discover prosecutorial misconduct.

In brief written testimony Monday, Attorney General Aaron Frey said he sees the value in establishing a conviction integrity unit. As he testified in 2021, Frey said he’s confident his office can house a unit separately from its criminal division (which prosecutes homicides and other serious crimes.)

The Criminal Law Advisory Commission, which includes active and retired judges, defense attorneys and prosecutors and was established to advise lawmakers on proposed changes to its criminal code, opposed the bill Monday.

The group’s written testimony said the legislation was unnecessary, and that “current processes are adequate to identify and address potentially problematic convictions.”

They took issue with the fact that there appeared to be no limit on the number of people who can apply for review, and how many times they can apply. The bill calls for evidence of prosecutorial misconduct to be forwarded to state regulators, but not for misconduct by defense attorneys.

Others on Monday supported the bill because it would hold public officials accountable in Maine’s criminal legal system. Logan Perkins, a public defender who has represented people in post-conviction requests, said those stakeholders can include not only prosecutors but police, medical examiners and crime lab employees.

“There are bigger issues, and the patterns that take place would really be the advantage to having (an) essentially housed CIU that could look and say ‘Hey, we continue to see issues coming up with this particular law enforcement officer,'” Perkins testified.

Note: This story was updated on April 1 to correct information about exonerations in Maine. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, at least four Mainers have had felony-level convictions overturned.